It Just Doesn't Get Any Richer Than This
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008; Page F01
Good hot chocolate reminds me of a brownie: It is dark, dreamy, vanilla-nuanced, creamy-textured. It's indulgent in a fluid way, flowing from saucepan to cup, with the chocolate itself suspended in a briskly whisked, lightly sweetened, milky solution.
Liquid chocolate: Really, that is what good hot chocolate should be at its essence. While the drink is defined by the quality of the chocolate, its dairy enrichment, vanilla flavoring and spark of salt conspire to make it all that it is -- which is quite wonderful.
The most engaging and, well, the sexiest of all hot chocolates is made by creating a lush chocolate base that gets whipped into a saucepan of hot milk, resulting in a lightly thickened potion. It qualifies as dessert. The basis for my hot chocolate is dark chocolate cream, an emulsion of chocolate and heavy cream known as a ganache.
A ganache is made by integrating finely chopped chocolate and warm heavy cream to create a stable, lustrous mixture. Specifically, an emulsion occurs when one element is suspended in another. The goal is to combine the cream and chocolate smoothly so the mixture does not separate, or "break," and it requires preparing the chocolate correctly and stirring the components slowly at specific intervals.
Once this suave chocolate ganache is at hand (it can be used after its 30-minute rest or refrigerated for longer keeping), it is combined with the heated ingredients to turn it flowing. The magic of the drink is in the careful mingling of the elements: The milk-and-sugar base should be cooked only until bubbles appear at the edges of the pan; after the ganache is added, the mixture should be heated just to drinking temperature. At either stage, allowing the liquid to come to a more vigorous boil will diminish the drink's gleaming texture.
A word about salt: A pinch, preferably of fine sea salt, added to both the dark chocolate cream base and the hot chocolate base brings out all the subtleties of flavor present in the chocolate and will round out the taste. Without salt, hot chocolate can taste flat.
If I'm in a playful mood, I treat the finished drink, one portion at a time, to an animated frothing with a steamer nozzle. That turns the already delicious mixture into the softest, creamiest potion ever.
Lisa Yockelson is the author of "ChocolateChocolate" (Wiley, 2005).
